[R-meta] Fwd: meta analysis package "metafor" --- one group survival outcome?

[Michael Dewey]

Dear Hong

Comment in-line

On 28/06/2017 03:25, Hong Zhao wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I have a question for R package "metafor". On page 35 of the package file,
> I saw the meta-analysis for a two sample survival analysis, does anyone
> know whether I can use this package to do one-sample survival analysis?
>
> Here is what I have: three 3 studies with all the survival information
> (time to event and censor information). I want to combine the survival
> rates (KM estimates) at 6 months for these 3 studies using meta-analysis.
> Since the survival rates are not normally distributed and I cannot just
> simply treat them as proportions to use meta-analysis method for normal
> data or proportion data, I am not sure whether I can just transform them
> using log(survival rate) (and get their variance accordingly) and use
> meta-analysis for normal data. Does anyone know a better way to do it? Or
> can the package perform the meta-analysis for a single group survival
> outcome?
>

I think you are looking for incidence rates here. There are some options 
outlined in the documentation for escalc under the heading methods for 
event counts.

> BTW, does anyone know any method for sample size calculation for
> meta-analysis (outcome is one-sample binomial or survival outcome as I
> mentioned above)? I want to perform non-inferiority test, but did not find
> anything available from online for meta-analysis sample size
> calculation for either binomial or survival outcome. I guess I may need to
> just do simulation if there is no available sources.
>

Why not just do your analysis and report confidence intervals? It is not 
like a trial where you can always recruit a few more cases so knowing 
you need 100 primary studies is hardly going to help if only seven exist.

> Thanks so much for your kind help!
>
> Best!
>
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>

In this case it did not matter but this is a plain text list and sending 
HTML mangles your message.
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-- 
Michael
http://www.dewey.myzen.co.uk/home.html